Inside the (Sundance) Jury Room with Joe Berlinger: Part One

At the Continental Airlines ticket counter of the Salt Lake CityAirport, on the final day of the 1997 Sundance Film Festival,documentary competition juror Joe Berlinger, his wife and his daughter,are preparing for the flight home. At the awards ceremony the previousevening, dramatic and documentary winners were announced. Berlinger isanxious to share with indieWIRE an insight into the jury process and afew days later after a few preliminary phone calls and a fax, we chat.The result is a unique perspective on the experience of serving as aSundance “judge,” as well as the inner-workings and dynamics of a festival’sjury.

Comprised of five individuals who have had documentary films screen atSundance, the 1997 Documentary Competition Jury was: Jerret Engle(“Something Within Me“), Deborah Hoffman (“Complaints Of A DutifulDaughter“), Michael Lumpkin (“The Celluloid Closet“), Lourdes Portillo (“TheDevil Never Sleeps“), and Joe Berlinger. Two of Berlinger’sdocumentaries, produced with his partner Bruce Sinofsky, have beenincluded in the Sundance competition, “Brother’s Keeper” (1992) and“Paradise Lost” (1996). At the last week’s ceremony, the jury proclaimedJane C. Wagner and Tina DiFeliciantonio’s “Girls Like Us” the Grand JuryPrize winner in the documentary competition. The group presentedfilmmaker Arthur Dong (“Licensed To Kill“) with the DGA‘s Directing Award;Renee Tajima-Pena’s “My America…Or Honk If You Love Buddha” was awarded the cinematography award for Christine Choy’s work; the Freedom ofExpression Award was split between Macky Alston’s “Family Name” and LauraAngelica Simon’s “Fear And Learning At Hoover Elementary“, and a specialjury prize was presented to Kirby Dick’s “Sick: The Life And Death Of BobFlanagan, Supermasochist“. Also, Monte Bramer’s “Paul Monette: The Brink Of Summer’s End” was presented with the festivals’ Audience Award andDong’s “Licensed To Kill” took the Filmmakers’ Trophy.

Berlinger is blunt about his reasons for wanting to participate in theSundance jury — his feeling is that previous documentary juries haveslighted his and Sinofsky’s films. He clarifies that he “wanted to be ajuror because I have not understood how we have done so well in the filmworld, but we have struck out in the documentary world (theInternational Documentary Association, Sundance Film Festival juries,and The Oscars).” Berlinger explains that he “really wanted to have anunderstanding our how the process works,” due to the fact that he was“incredulous at the lack of recognition (his films have received) fromour peers.”

Beginning the discussion, an obvious first question for a Sundance juroris what sort of influence Festival organizers have over the juries’final decisions. Berlinger is frank, “Geoffrey (Sundance InstituteProgramming Director Geoffrey Gilmore) made it a point to stay out.Aside from obvious rules he stayed out of it, which I think is veryadmirable.” The group embarked on screenings of competitiondocumentaries from day one. On day five, Wednesday, the group met fortwo hours for an initial discussion. By then Berlinger had already seenwhat, in his mind, was the festivals’ best documentary, Kirby Dick’s“Sick”. It was also clear that, as Berlinger explains, “we seemed to havesome very different opinions.”

On day eight of the festival, Friday, the group met for eight hours in asession that became a series of compromises leading to the announcementof their decisions at Saturday night’s Awards’ ceremony. Berlingeracknowledges that within the first half hour of discussion on Friday, itwas clear that there would be no consensus. At a point in thediscussion each juror revealed their top choice — five different filmswere named. Confirming that the jury’s proceedings were, “pleasant, butfractious,” he reveals that the group were “so un-unanimous, it waspretty staggering.”